


ask him to ask you

by brucewaynery



Series: happy steve bingo fills [2]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Promposal, and cafes, gratuitous use of rubics cubes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 18:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20821850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: "I can't go to prom because, apparently, my 'attendance is terrible' 'cause I'm at college for most of the week," Tony rants, swallowing his coffee like his life depended on it."Well," Steve starts, "there's no rule against you being a plus one."Tony lights up, "Steve, I'm so happy that you're a rulebreaking nightmare!"Steve just hopes that none of this gets back to Bucky, because who knows what kind of a chewing he's gonna get for telling the love of his life (stupidly long-lasting, almost definitely unrequited) to ask someone else to prom.PROMPOSAL





	ask him to ask you

Tony’s things clatter onto the table and Tony himself follows, practically collapsing opposite Steve.

They’re in the diner they’ve been going to for the past few years every Friday after school. Steve can’t tell if he hates that Bucky calls it date-night, or if he wishes that it was.

“PhD finally beat you?” Steve teases.

Tony glares at him, offended, “No.” He drinks his coffee as grumpily as he can until Steve asks him what’s wrong. Steve definitely shouldn’t find this as amusing as he does.

“What happened?”

“Turns out,” Tony starts, dropping his cup on the table and turning to Steve (occasionally, Steve gets a headrush from Tony’s full attention, the overwhelming intensity of it, all focused on him. Today is one of those times. Most days are, if he’s being honest.), “I’m not allowed to go to prom!”

Steve’s mouth is too full to answer properly, so he makes a suitably shocked face.

“Because my attendance is shit! _Apparently_ I’ve been ‘classed as a student’ even though everyone knows I’m a TA and I’m in college half the week. AND they said it was all fine at the start of the year. But I guess not!”

Steve knows how much this means to Tony. Not prom specifically, just the whole ‘normal teenage experience’. And because of how important it is to Tony, and because he’s spent far too much of his life finding loopholes (which only got worse when he met Bucky in kindergarten and then Matt, in freshman year), he says quite possibly the worst thing he could to the guy he’s maybe, a little, (definitely, a lot) in love with.

“Be someone’s plus-one, no attendance rules against that,” he suggests, even as everything in his body and mind screams at him to shut up.

He tells himself that it’s worth it when Tony lights up and calls him a genius as he whips out his phone, fingers flying over the keypad.

“Bucky, help me--”

“Is it Tony related?”

“Maybe.”

Bucky sighs and nudges Steve with his foot until he hands him the popcorn bowl.

“Well,” he says, once he has his mouth full, “what stupid thing did you do?”

“Um. Well, you know how much Tony wanted to go to prom?”

“Sure.”

“The school said that he couldn’t ’cause of his attendance, so we found a loophole and long story short I told him to ask someone to prom,” Steve says, trying as hard as he can to not look at Bucky, because he knows that he has his ‘You’re so goddamn stupid’ face on.

“Someone who isn’t you?”

“Someone who isn’t me.”

Bucky’s silent for all of three seconds. “Why did _you_ ask him to prom?”

“Oh yeah, why didn’t I ask him in a crowded diner and lose both my dignity and one of my best friends in the span of five seconds?” Steve says, sarcastically, throwing kernels at Bucky.

“Even if he did say no, he wouldn’t be a dick about it--”

“He’d think it was a joke,” Steve grumbles.

Bucky hums and concedes his point. “Yeah, but he wouldn’t be a dick about it.”

“Buck.”

“Steve.”

“He’s gonna find the love of his life and if not for prom, then probably at college, if he hasn’t already and it’s not gonna be me,” Steve says in a small voice, in a rush.

Bucky tugs him into a rough hug, saying more than he ever properly could.

“Buckaroo! Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Steve freezes when he hears that, just a couple feet in front of him and Sam crashes into him. His heart drops straight out of his chest when Tony drags Bucky out of the lunch line to the corner of the cafeteria, out of earshot of everyone.

“He’s not gonna ask him to prom,” Sam says, confidently.

“I know that,” Steve defends, even as he focuses on Not Looking at them.

“Bucky already has a date.”

Steve grins, despite himself, “Oh yeah?”

Sam smiles back, “Yeah.”

“About fucking time.”

Watching Sam and Bucky pine after each other in the absolute dumbest, most ridiculous way possible, in the way that only those two could, for at least the last two years (or maybe even longer), had been a small hell on his part, so he’s happy for them. Hopefully, it’ll mean that he’s no longer playing the middle man for them.

“I wasn’t stealing your man, just looking for advice,” Tony says when they rejoin the line.

“And you went to Buck?” Steve says, incredulously, masking the (stupid, dumb, irrational) hurt. He gets a punch in the arm and a glare for the trouble.

“I’ll have you know that I can be very advisable.”

“You once told me to taste different paint to see if the colour changed the flavour!”

Sam looks between the two of them, “You ate paint because you thought it was flavoured?”

“He told me to!” Steve accuses. In his defence, he had been curious.

Tony tries, and fails, to hide a laugh, “Now, Steven, if Bucky jumped off a bridge--”

“You’re spending far too much time with my mother,” Steve grumbles.

“No such thing,” Tony says, simply.

They get their food and Steve pushes anything to do with prom and Tony to the back of his mind in favour of poking fun at Sam and Bucky.

“-- I’ll make sure that he doesn’t suspect a thing, honey, yeah, okay, have a good day, sweetie.”

“Make sure who doesn’t suspect a thing?” Steve asks, dropping his bag on the floor and kicking off his shoes as his ma hangs up the phone.

“I thought I taught you better than to eavesdrop, and I know that I taught you better than to leave your shoes like that,” his ma says, pointing at his haphazardly thrown shoes, barely a foot away from the rack. Steve rolls his eyes but he goes to righten his shoes anyway.

His ma gives him a quick hug, “How was your day?”

Steve shrugs noncommittally, following her into the kitchen. “Eh. Nothing new, prom stuff, college stuff.”

“You wanna go?” She asks, turning on the oven and pulling a dish out of the fridge. Steve takes out plates and cutlery and starts to set the table.

“Prom? I don’t have anyone to ask.”

“What about Tony?” His ma asks, innocently.

“What-what about Tony?” Steve asks, matching her innocence, looking up from where he’s sitting.

“Steven.”

“Ma!”

“I’ve seen the way that boy looks at you, and the way you look at him.”

“I told him to take--”

“Someone else? Yeah, James told me about that.”

Steve groans and lets his head drop onto the table, “Does everyone report to you?”

“Only when you’ve forgotten your common sense.”

Steve resists the urge to bang his head on the table, just barely. His ma sets the timer and then comes to sit beside him.

“Steve.”

“Yeah.”

She brushes his hair back, “You two are gonna be fine, I promise.”

Steve lets out a long, high pitched whine, mostly muffled by the table.

Later, when he’s ready to go to sleep, he fiddles with a Rubic’s Revenge cube, twisting it so all the colours jumble together and then twisting it back to organisation.

\--

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Tony, the boy who’s so much smarter than them all, the boy who can go head to head with highschool seniors, despite being half their height, says to him, handing him the cube, still all mixed up.

“You don’t fix it,” Steve replies, twisting the cube and swinging his legs, feet barely brushing the tarmac as Tony watches, enthralled. “You solve it, like a maths thing.” He shows him the side he just solved, red. His best record is one and a half sides, but his ma can do _all_ the sides.

“Like a puzzle?”

“Game.”

“My father says that games are a waste of time,” Tony mumbles. 

Steve hands him the cube, rejumbled, “Tell him it’s one of those maths things.”

On his birthday, Tony gives him a new cube, a four-by-four one, called Rubic’s Revenge, because Steve told him to keep the other one. It took him until the summer to solve one side and then until he was in the fifth grade to do all.

\--

_ “Hey, uh, Mrs. Rogers, Sarah, I’m just, um, calling, well, leaving a message, messaging? Anyway. Um, the stuff, for Steve, I have it, well, I still need to fix a, uh thing in the thing but it’ll be done by tomorrow, by Friday. And, uh, thanks, for all of this, really. Um, goodbye. Thank you.” _

Tony hangs up the phone and re-focusses on the cube in front of him, moving the magnifier above a tiny little mechanism. It’s an almost-replica of a Rubic’s Revenge, made of wood, when Steve solves it, it should open to show ‘Will you take me to prom?’. Keyword being should.

He solves it, of course he does, and then spends half the night convincing himself not to destroy it and tell Sarah that he made a mistake. Bucky told him that if he didn’t ask Steve to ask him to prom, he would do it for them himself. On the school intercom.

He spends the other half convincing himself not to down an entire bottle of Daniel’s. Sarah, Bucky, Steve and he himself would never be able to forgive him if he asked Steve out hungover. He doesn’t know if the fact that at least four people refuse to let him ask Steve out hungover is a blessing or a curse.

He works on the Riemann hypothesis until he can barely keep his eyes open.

The next day he’s half-awake in college. The professor tells him he’s happy to see him sober.

“PhD finally beat your ass?” Steve asks, pushing a muffin and a mocha towards him after he drops his many, many bags.

Tony takes half the muffin in his mouth, “You sound like Bucky,” he says, though it sounds more like ‘mmm mmmf mmf mmfmm’.

“I’ve sounded like Bucky for as long as you’ve known me,” Steve retorts, grinning at him over his hot chocolate.

Tony fakes a look of shock. “How have I just realised?” 

If this were a date, Steve would say something like ‘love makes you blind’, and Tony would maybe laugh and then lean over the table to kiss him and he’d smile. But it’s not. So he says, “‘Cause you’re an idiot,” instead.

If this were a date, Tony would say something like ‘your idiot’, and Steve would maybe laugh and then lean over the table to kiss him and he’d smile. But it’s not. Yet (hopefully, so damn hopefully), anyway. So he says, “Started a PhD before most people got their college acceptance letters,” instead.

“Selectively appearing brain cells,” Steve says.

Tony outright groans at that, “You’re lucky that Bruce isn’t here.”

“I don’t need biology to know that I’m right.”

“Sound like Bucky!”

“Arguably not a bad thing.”

Tony gives Steve a look. “I will survey everyone who’s ever had to come into contact with Barnes.”

“I’ll ask my ma.”

“Cheater.”

“He’s your best friend!” Steve says, in a sing-song voice.

“Rhodey might have a problem with that.”

Steve just shrugs and they lapse into a comfortable silence, drinking their drinks.

“I have something for you,” Tony says, suddenly, putting down his cup and rummaging around in one of his bags. He hands him the cube, hand shaking slightly.

Steve turns it in his hands. A wooden Rubic’s Revenge. “You made it?”

Tony nods, nervous. “Solve it.”

“Time?”

Tony nods again and looks at his watch. “Go.” He watches Steve’s hands fly over the cube, fast and gentle at the same time. “A minute-twenty,” he says, smiling back at Steve as he places the solved cube on the table, grandly. He’s exactly on par with his personal best, and the look on his face quells some of the nervousness Tony feels, just hoping that the little, tiny mechanism works.

The cube folds out into a long line of six squares. _WILL YOU ASK ME TO PROM?_

Steve smiles, so Tony takes that as a good sign, “Before I ask I gotta know, is it because you want to go to prom or ’cause you like me ‘cause--”

“I’ve liked you since you told me to lie to my father, and I’ve probably loved you since you gave me that damn Rubic’s cube and I’ve known that I love you since you punched Beck in fifth grade.”

Steve stares at him, “Will you go to prom with me?”

“I’d love to.”

Steve does what he’s wanted to do for the past few years they’ve been going to this cafe and lunges across the table to kiss him. It’s a little awkward, and he thinks that he hears Angie, who runs the cafe, yell _finally!_, but honestly, he’s not paying much attention to anything or anyone who’s not Tony.

“I, uh, love you too, have done for too long to remember what’s it like not to, to be honest,” Steve says, when they pull away.

Tony drags him back into another, then another and again and again until Steve’s lightheaded in the best way possible.

(Three years later, after his graduation, Steve hands him a wooden three-by-three. When Tony solves it, it springs open and there’s a shining, silver-coloured key.)

((And two years after that, Tony gives him a two-by-two cube, and when Steve solves it, and when it creaks open, there’s a ring, gleaming. He says yes.))

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos/[reblogs](https://au-ti.tumblr.com/post/188029043436/ask-him-to-ask-you) mean the world!


End file.
